Some Action in the Air

Low-fare air carrier Southwest Airlines, which
has a lawsuit pending against the Orbitz travel Web site that is backed by
five competitors, has yanked its flight listing data from the industry
clearinghouse that supplies the site.

And, Travelocity.com Inc. has acquired WhereTo, an
Australian firm with highly rated booking technology for a new type of air
fare.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Travelocity said
that WhereTo has technology for searching consolidator or so-called "net
fares" in which a supplier offers a fare to the travel agent at one price and
the agent is allowed to market that fare at a higher price and earn the
margin.

Travelocity said it now will be better able to efficiently manage net fares
in near real-time, improving customer fare options. The WhereTo technology
will also provide better pricing for more complicated trips such as en-route
and multiple stopovers.

Meanwhile, Southwest's action clearly indicates that it means business in its
dispute with Orbitz.

"We do not want to be associated with a site that eliminates independent
alternatives for the consumer," company spokeswoman Ginger Hardage told
Reuters.

Dallas-based Southwest filed a false advertising and unfair
competition lawsuit against the new Orbitz.com travel Web site, which is
sponsored by a consortium of rival airlines including American, United,
Northwest, Delta and Continental.

In the suit, Southwest claims that Orbitz "has refused to eliminate false and
misleading information from its Web site concerning Southwest's schedules,
fares and routes."

Now, it is denying access to fare and route data by not providing it to the
Airline Ticket Publishing Co., an industrywide clearinghouse that provides
data to travel agents around the United States.

Orbitz had continued to display publicly available fare and schedule
information, stating that it pays a fee to license this data with the right
to offer it online.

Southwest now apparently will make its listings available through the
computer reservation system of Sabre Holdings Corp., the largest system for
travel agents.

Hardage was quoted as saying the absence of Southwest means that Orbitz
cannot claim that it offers the lowest fares.

"Without Southwest Airlines, Orbitz is a collection of five of the largest
high-fare airlines," Hardage said. "Any claim of being the lowest fares is
certainly not the case."

Online bookings clearly are important to Southwest; the airline recorded more
than one-third of its sales through the Internet, according to a Wall
SreetJournal report.

Meanwhile, Orbitz spokeswoman Carol Jouzitis was quoted by Reuters as saying
that Southwest's decision will have little impact on the travel site, since
Orbitz wasn't getting paid for booking Southwest flights.

As for Travelocity, the company said the WhereTo technology will be combined
with its current fare search tools, enhancing its ability to book complex
itineraries with multiple stopovers online.

"By purchasing WhereTo, we can use its tools -- and leverage the great team
that developed them -- to further enhance our capabilities as the net fare
market evolves," said Terrell B. Jones, president and chief executive officer
of Travelocity.com.